Papillon
by Crescentium
Summary: Schuldig is a mind collector, and he must finish what he started.


**Author's Notes:** This is based on images and ideas that came to me from the song & music video Papillon by the Editors.

* * *

Would she have loved him, had he not _made_ her love him? Was it all more for his making, or was her delusion self-inflicted? These days, he couldn't tell. He knew only the breath that whispered sweet nothing in his ear and the mind that was filled with sugar and sunflowers.

_Just remember, you're fucking a dead girl._ Crawford's comment had been abruptly spoken at the breakfast table. Schuldig had glared at him, but the precognitive had levelled his resistance with a stare that was impossible to argue with.

He didn't think it was entirely fair. Crawford baited him with this assignment. It was a mission set to fail, to tell him to see this girl and not to become lost in her mind. She was won by his powers of persuasion and he wrapped her in a mist of mystery. It would have been impossible for her not to fall in love with him when he decided she should.

She became his pet, his little papillon. Her mind was like those butterfly ears, fluffy and perky. She fascinated him. He had kept her for three weeks now, and he found he missed her when she was not with him. He thought of vampires and how they kept pet humans along to feed from; he imagined he had become a vampire, and she was his favourite treat.

_A drug, more like it,_ Crawford had said when they had discussed it. Schuldig admitted it was true. Her thoughts were intoxicating when he touched her; her heart leapt, she was breathless, overwhelmed, excited. He was fascinated by her fragile innocence and suspended lust and all the variations in between.

At times he was so deep inside her that he thought he, too, loved, but he wasn't sure if he loved her or if he loved himself inside her, or perhaps he loved because he had absorbed her love and he could no longer tell the difference. It was a symphony of tastes to explore and eventually he didn't care whose feelings it was that he felt.

Crawford had no pity when he told Schuldig that she had outlived her usefulness. The order was simple and it was necessary. No witnesses. Schuldig knew what he needed to do.

He had thought about how he would do it. He knew a dozen ways in which to extinquish this innocence, but nothing felt quite appropriate. He had thought of guns and merciful drugs, but it was impossible to decide. Crawford told him to just get it over with, but Crawford didn't understand. This was important, it had to be done right.

So that night when he was lying on top of her and she was arching her back and he admired the curve of her chest, he put his hands on her throat, gently at first. She was smiling and her mind was smiling and it tasted like fresh picked strawberries. He started squeezing harder, just a little at first, and her mind fluttered like butterfly wings. It occurred to him that he had never held a butterfly in his hands. What would it be like to drink the last breath of his victim? The beating of the butterfly wings became faster, faster, faster, as he squeezed tighter, tighter, tighter. The taste of her love changed and transformed until everything was darkness. Her thoughts were screaming at her last moments, and he was disappointed. She sounded just like everyone else.

When she was silent, he stared at her still face, trying to find traces of the warmth he remembered. But now she was cold, and he could only find the receding warmth of her flesh. Her mind was gone, but he felt her inside him still. It was as though he had sucked her in and now she was a part of him. But she was not sweetness and warmth, she was terror and cold. He wanted to get away from her, she was a broken porcelain doll now. The screaming of the dead mind drove him up from the bed, over to his clothes, and out of the door.

He had not brought a car. He had expected Crawford to be there waiting, to drive him home. Instead, the street was empty.

Schuldig started walking. The screaming still haunted him, he wanted to get away from it. He walked faster. Faster. Faster. Before he knew it he was running. He could still hear the flapping of the butterfly wings of her mind; or had that been her heart? But it didn't beat anymore, why should he still hear the flapping? Was it his own heart? He matched his steps to the beat.

Faster.

Faster.

Faster.

He listened to the beat of his feet against the pavement. There was a hypnotic rhythm to it. But concentrating on it didn't prevent him from hearing the screaming. He opened his mind wider.

_I want ice cream._

Child. He found that the voice helped him to shut out the screaming. He grasped at the voice, followed it. Soon he picked up two new voices.

_You liar, tell me who she was!_ Woman.

_Oh God, she doesn't believe me._ Man.

Faster.

He continued running, voices increasing with every step. One new step, one new thought, the minds pounded into his mind, and he welcomed them. He collected them, more and more, until he didn't exist anymore, only the voices existed, and the steps that gave rhythm to them.

He ran through the city, he was a mind collector, faster, faster, faster.

Finally, the streets became empty and the houses were gone. The voices faded one by one. Schuldig stopped under the trees, breathless, gasping, silence leaving him with nothing but his own thoughts. He felt exhausted, spent, alone – until he realised that he wasn't alone at all. He became aware of a mind that was so familiar that he had not consciously realised it was there until its shape formed at the edges of his consciousness.

Schuldig saw the man sitting under a tree on a blanket, a basket next to him. It looked like Crawford was waiting for him to join him for a picnic, except that he was wearing his fine white suit and held a wine glass, reading a newspaper as though he was sitting on the couch like he always did in the evenings. The whole scene was so out of place that Schuldig would have laughed if he hadn't felt so tired.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

Crawford looked up from his paper. "Sit down," he said and folded the paper.

Schuldig dropped himself on the blanket and leaned on the tree, though he felt oddly reluctant to go near Crawford right now. "Why didn't you come pick me up?" he asked harshly.

He realised he was angry with Crawford. He was angry with him for not picking him up, for telling him to kill her, for telling him to use her, for just sitting here and waiting for him to run his feet off trying to forget something he wouldn't have known in the first place if Crawford hadn't told him to do it.

"You could have done it yourself, you know," he said before Crawford could answer his first question. Assuming, he had planned to answer in the first place. Schuldig looked at Crawford angrily.

"You needed to end what you started," Crawford said. He put his hands in his lap, his fingers twined round the wine glass.

"I only started it because you told me to!"

"No." Crawford looked at him. "I told you to extract the necessary information from her and to get her to work for us for three weeks. I didn't tell you to get emotionally involved with her."

That made Schuldig's words stick on his tongue. He looked away. His anger for Crawford subsided, to be replaced by an empty feeling at the bottom of his gut. Schuldig could feel the precognitive's eyes on him. It was as though Crawford was waiting for something. The telepath didn't try to figure out what it was. He was too tired to play guessing games.

"Just tell me one thing," Schuldig said after a while. "Was it a test?"

Crawford nodded.

"Did I pass?"

Crawford leaned in closer and put the wine glass away. He placed his hand on Schuldig's leg. The telepath looked up in surprise, only to see the smile forming on the precognitive's thin lips.

After a few minutes, Schuldig was reassured that he had passed.


End file.
